Were you always 'different' ?

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Being different all my life has led to my random comments, unpredictability and actions, shown to those around me.

I always knew that I was different at school, didn't fit in anywhere and never really had many friends, couldn't quite figure out why until I found out about autism.

But at the place im currently working at I don't feel different at all, i feel like I fit right in. (But that's probably because the conversation there only ever consists of cars, which is pretty much the only thing I'm interested in).

I have always felt different for as far back as grade 1.

This thread is very enlightening. I would have thought that only neurotypicals would think to compare themselves to "the crowd", wondering whether they were weird, whether anyone else noticed it, whether they still liked them, whether to hide or show off that weirdness... I would have thought that autistics would be more interested in their special interests than what "the crowd" was doing.

seems there is a substantial number of aspies who see the crowd as a benchmark. I suspect a lot of them are high-functioning and that many can pass for NT.

I have to take inventory so that I waste less time on projects I have no aptitude for, like dealing with large numbers of unfamiliar people. Special interests are fine, but they acquire real meaning when the work is continued by others. Sometimes I think that the best way to propagate my technical work would have been to patent it badly, so that others would consider it worth stealing.

Be careful about basing your world on assumptions. Many times they are glib and inaccurate.

I knew I was different when I started school, because that's when you normally are around a lot of other kids your age for the first time and realize suddenly not every other kid can do the things you can or find easy to do (reading, writing, drawing), but other kids can do things you can't or find hard to do. (phys. ed, math)

Being different was not seen as a bad thing by most other people until I became a teenager. Go figure.

Today I went to a music festival in hopes of meeting someone of interest. I wore a "baseball cap" modified with a small fan in the bill to cool my face, powered by a small solar panel. It was mostly a gimmick - a somberero would have kept me cooler - but I got a lot of comments, and could easily have continued any of those conversations if I wanted. Meanwhile, the only "different" thing people noticed about me was my (removable) hat. Adopting a single, visible difference might keep people from gossiping about our other variations. There was once a travelling salesman who always wore a big Raccoon coat, winter and summer. He did it to save time. As soon as a store owner saw that coat, he knew it was time to talk about sampling re-ordering his line of products.
Overall, I find life much more pleasant in the company of artists and other people who tend to eccentricity, and who value the variety.

I have used this method for a long time and it's usually doing something with my hair - the more unusual my hair is the better I feel.

year 'round I always dress the same, in a tank top and thin slacks with belt and loafers, pony tail, raybans. in the summer months I add a Winston straw hat, in the winter a fuzzy-lined windbreaker. this seems enough to mark me as "different" in my neighborhood at least.

good question.

i have always had a memory of being in a crib with a diaper, & feeling mad because i wanted to wear pants & walk around freely like the other humans were doing, & i felt i was grownup-conscious enough to do so.

when i first started school, we were given outline-pictures to color, & i colored every part of mine in a different color, & they changed the class i'd been assigned to, but nobody ever explained why.

my mother read books out loud to my brother (who was a year older), & i learned to read by looking over her shoulder, so i was already able to do so when i started first grade.

i don't know much else, i felt normal to myself all along, but i couldn't help but notice how stupid the people around me were (i learned, not quickly enough, to keep this knowledge to myself), not just including the adults, but especially the adults.

the communication issue didn't bother me until i wanted to talk to girls, & found they could make me forget what i was starting to say just by looking at me.

Well when I was in preschool I was the one kid who sat in the corner every day stacking blocks. I was very quiet around everyone but a select few people. I spent a lot of time in the special ed class or with the schools speech teacher or the guidance counselor. I didn't really get the hang of reading until I was 7 or 8 years old. I couldn't keep friends for very long because they all thought I was weird or creepy.

I think that qualifies as "different".

Yep. It was so bad that at age 4 I was sent to a psychologist because my kindergarden teacher thought I was anti-social and just not acting normally. The teacher thought I was maybe abused at home, but of course I wasn't (I have a very loving family that I adore) - I was just a little weirdo and nothing more came of it.

I wasn't even doing it on purpose then, I just preferred playing alone and sitting alone and basically being by myself. And that has never changed. I did start to do it on purpose as I grew older, because social interaction became harder and harder to deal with. It certainly didn't help that my parents signed me up for girl scouts against my will and sent me off to camp with them at age 6 - all in a misguided attempt to help me gain friends. Because I had none. Nor did I want any. I had my pets. That was enough then and they are enough now.

They tried it again in 7th grade where THEY would call up my class mates and arrange play dates of sorts - again something I did not initiate at all but went to anyway because I wanted to make my folks happy. Of course, no real friendships came out of that because I didn't want to be there or even really liked them and it was all fake.

I didn't start to make real friends until I was about 20 and I actually have a real close bestie that I have known since I was 21 and we hang out a lot. Something happens at 20 and also 30, I think. It's like every time I reach a milestone in age, I achieve some type of emotional progress too. I can't wait to see what'll happen when I turn 35/40.

I got sent to summer camp when I was about ten. I wasn't very sociable, but I made friends with the cabin "counsellor" by taking the bunk under his, and quietly waking him up whenever he fell asleep before someone signalled him for a poker game. We camped out one night, and I slept a bit away from the others. I woke up only half as far from the edge of a cliff. One afternoon, we had "Klondike days" - we were supposed to look for "gold" - yellow painted rocks - in the woods to trade for better food at supper. I started out re-checking where the mob had passed, and found nothing. Then I realized this was not mandatory, and just went back to the cabin to read. I didn't even miss eating, the solitude was such a treat. I guess my parents were a bit dismayed at that, as they never sent me back. Then there was the canoe race. We had a mass start from shore, and I didn't even have room to get my paddle in. So, I grabbed the gunwale of the adjacent boat and pushed back. Right away, we both had room to paddle, but our boat was in front.

I have to bring up another occasion though, where there was this youth exchange, after an arduous twelve week residential, and my country were the hosts, the latter half of the group were Spanish guests.
I can say the experience was maybe haunteringly bewildering and honest to a degree, as I felt in no position to 'host', as it were, especially to a group of foreign nationals, but it turned out ok in the end, well, it was a rollercoaster of a week, and I found them quite engaging, I often got embarrassed by the lack of crossover introspection from us Brits, but we weren't all born with silver spoons in our mouths, so usually, as usually introverted as I am, I casually decided to bring up the rear and 'entertain'. Luckily, I had some encouragement from my ex school mate who showed up out the blue one night as a DJ, I had no idea he fancied me..like he was just an old mate..but something got me up on those tables dancing to NightFever and Stayin Alive.. I think, this was owing to my retro taste in music and some persuasive high school undertones I opted for. Some of the exchange students were from Madrid, others Barcelona.
I only bring this up now, as I've just finished reading a book on Franco's civil war in Spain, made almost entirely from non-fiction material using fictitious characters to boost the book along. What made me realise why I was so engrossed in the book, had something to do with the emotional ending of the exchange, and such parting was unusally and highly upsetting for me. (It was like a last holocaust meeting) and I think that maybe I felt a raw part of a real family, that suddenly became dispersed and had to head back home, there was countless tears, and emotional farewells, I had formed one such close bond and I just felt I could not take it. The same separist struggles that Juan Paulo and some others probably were accustomed to wasn't lost on me. It was them who wouldn't let us detach ourselves. I was 19 and i remember getting so upset I ended up doing the undertakers share of the sweeping, the unrelenting praise was one thing, it certainly made me focus on the harsh realities of outside suburban existence, modern urbanism has swept the core shackles of these communist countries away now, but the book brought an eternal ancestral plight to the fore, as most of Vicky Hislops books do.